The Hope Chest — Chapter 11 - Finding Chloe

Finding Chloe

THE NUMBER ON THE BRASS KEY WAS 907. Violet had never been in an elevator before. It was packed, and it stopped at every oor. A teenage boy in a white uniform worked the controls, and every time they left a oor, Violet's stomach lurched unpleasantly. On the eighth oor, several men got on who reeked of whiskey, a smell Violet recognized from back when Father used to drink it, when alcohol was still legal.

“Goin' down?” one of the men asked tipsily.

“Going up, sir,” said the elevator boy.

“Thassallright. We'll go up, then we'll go down.” He and his companion laughed uproariously, then tried to sing a song that went, “The red, red, anti-surage rose!” These were the only words they could remember, but they managed to sing them three times before the stiing, drunk-smelling elevator reached the ninth oor and Violet tumbled gratefully out.

The corridor was C shaped, and she went around it the wrong way and had to turn and go the other way before she found that room 907 was actually right by the elevator. She turned the key in the door and went in.

The room was tiny but had two iron bedsteads in it. One of them was obviously taken. There was a trunk at the foot of it and a

selection of shirtwaists laid out on it, as if the owner had had trouble making up her mind which to wear. There was a straw hat decorated with articial red roses hanging from a peg, and a clothesline strung across the room held several pairs of black nankeen bloomers, two petticoats, and a corset.

Violet ducked under all of these and sat down on the other bed.

The room was sweltering hot, as if all the heat in Nashville had risen up and settled in it. The window was open, and so was the transom over the door. There was an electric fan standing near the window. Violet went over and turned it on.

The underclothes apped on the clothesline. A stack of papers on the nightstand between the two beds uttered to the oor, and Violet bent wearily to pick them up. They looked like pamphlets.

The top one said on the front, Men of the South! Now is the time to show your gallantry! Southern women require your aid as never before!

Violet put the papers back on the nightstand and weighted them down with an electric curling iron. She opped back on the bed, feeling hopeless. It was horribly hot in here. It was too hot to move, let alone to go looking for Chloe or to nd out what had happened to Mr. Martin and Myrtle. She would have liked to have taken o her clothes, but there was this unknown woman—she of the nankeen bloomers—who was going to come in sooner or later, so Violet couldn't. There was a little door in one corner of the room.

Violet went to it. It was a bathroom—well, there was no bathtub, but there was a toilet and a sink. Violet had stayed in hotels twice before, when she'd gone to Scranton with her mother, but she'd never been in a hotel room that had its own toilet. She turned the sink on and splashed water on her face. The water was warm, and it didn't run cold when she left the tap on. But when she wet her hair and neck and stood in front of the fan, she felt a little better.

She was hungry. She got up and went out of the room. She went back to the elevator and pushed the call button. She waited. It was stiingly hot in the hall. Through the elevator shafts she heard shouts and laughter but no sound of elevators moving. She looked around for the stairs.

It was even hotter in the stairwell. By the time she got down to the eighth oor, Violet couldn't stand the heat anymore. She went out into the hallway, which stank sourly of whiskey. The corridor was full of people, mostly men. They reeled and rolled as if they were standing on the deck of a ship. Some of them were tipsy, but most of them were positively drunk.

A man lurched toward her. His sti celluloid collar had come loose from all but one of the buttons that held it to his shirt. The collar stood on end on his shoulder, forming a big white C that ended in his right ear. “Here's another Anti, Jim!” he said. “Ask her if there's any more whicks … whickskey coming!”

Violet ed back into the stairwell. Halfway down she passed some women wearing yellow roses, and they edged away from her. “Look at that, Anne!” one of them said to the other. “They're using children now. They have no shame at all.”

She had forty-two cents in her pocket. She came out into the crowded grand lobby. She could smell food from somewhere. She went down the wide marble steps that led to the main entrance.

There was another wide stone staircase leading down to the cellar, and that was where the food smell was coming from. She started down the steps.

“I'm sorry, miss.” A man in a white uniform blocked her way.

“The Grill Room is for men only.”

Violet stared up at him in disbelief. It was one thing to have to use a separate entrance. But she was hungry!

“I have money,” she said.

“It's not a matter of money, miss,” the man replied, shaking his head. “The Grill Room is for gentlemen. If you go to the dining room on the main oor, they can accommodate you there.” He looked at Violet's plaid dress with the double row of gigantic black buttons and the appalling three-inch-wide patent leather belt.

“Provided you're suitably attired, of course.”

Violet climbed wearily up the stone steps again. She wove her way through the crowd and up a few more steps to the grand dining

room. Inside, a brass band was playing, booming through the clink of cutlery on china and the sound of voices. A man in a white tuxedo stood at the entrance. “I'm sorry, miss.” He barred her way.

“Evening wear is required in the dining room.”

Violet didn't have any evening wear. What was the matter with the world that you couldn't even get something to eat when you had forty-two cents in your pocket? She went back up to the front desk.

The desk clerk was counting his tally marks again. He looked up at Violet. “I have a dollar riding on your side,” he conded.

“Ordinarily I'm not a betting man, but I think you Antis are going to pull this o, I really do.”

Violet put her hand to the rose she was wearing. She had forgotten all about it. It had wilted with the heat, and a few petals came o. She looked at them, little bits of velvety crimson in the palm of her hand. She remembered the line the drunks in the elevator had been singing—“The red, red anti-surage rose”—and the man who had said, “Here's another Anti!” She'd been too upset to think about it before, but now she realized she'd been taken in by the anti-suragists. That woman who'd grabbed her at the train station, Charlotte Rowe, was an Anti, and she'd slapped an Anti rose on Violet and taken her up and put her in an Anti room. This was no way to nd Chloe!

But rst things rst. “Where can I get something to eat?” she asked the desk clerk. “They won't let me into the Grill Room downstairs or the dining room.”

The desk clerk frowned. “Well, you have to change for dinner, miss. Of course.”

“I don't have anything to change into,” Violet said. Her other dress wouldn't do either. She was starting to feel very cranky. “Is there anywhere I can just buy something to eat?” She thought about the businesses they had passed on the way from the train station, all closed except the theaters.

“Not at this time of night. Not anyplace that a young lady ought to go into. You'll have to wait till morning.”

Violet felt like crying. She didn't care about where a young lady ought to go; she just wanted something to eat. “I can't wait till morning. I'm hungry right now!”

“Hmm.” The desk clerk frowned, thinking. “Don't they serve refreshments at your meetings? There should be one going on right now.” He nodded upward. “Up there on the mezzanine oor. The Antis' strategy meeting should have sandwiches. I saw the waiters taking them up.”

Violet thanked him hurriedly and ran up the narrow stone stairway.

The mezzanine was a broad balcony above the lobby, with a large room set o it by French windows. In the room were many women and a few men, all well dressed, all wearing red roses. Violet didn't really pay much attention to them, though. In the room there was also a stand holding a tray, and on the tray were sandwiches: cucumber sandwiches, sliced cold chicken sandwiches, and cold tongue sandwiches. Violet gathered as many of them as would t onto one of the little china plates provided. Then she sat down on a chair near the wall and ate.

Nobody in the meeting seemed to have noticed that she had come in. They were all listening to a tall, thin, horse-faced woman in an enormous hat decorated with a ood of red roses and two ghastly green bird wings. She wore three red roses in a row on her lapel.

“I think we can count on Speaker Seth Walker from here on in,” the horse-faced woman was saying. “He no longer hearkens to the cry of the surage siren. We've got him listening to something else.”

A man in the room took two gold coins out of his pocket and jingled them loudly. The people in the room chuckled. Violet ate a cucumber sandwich.

“That's one thing we don't have to worry about, Miss Pearson,” a woman in a full-length black bombazine gown said to the horse- faced woman. “Money.”

“No, thank goodness,” said Miss Pearson. “There are so many gallant men willing to do their utmost to protect the rights of

Southern womanhood.”

“And an employer's right to hire anybody he wants, including needy children who have dependent parents,” the man who had jingled the coins said righteously.

“And, God willing, the rights of the whiskey distillers to conduct their business freely again someday,” said a woman sitting near Violet, but not loud enough to be generally heard.

“So I don't think we need to worry about all that yellow bunting hanging in the capitol,” said Miss Pearson. “The Sus can hang all the yellow bunting they want. Yellow bunting doesn't vote. And

neither do they.”

People chuckled.

“But what about our resolution to table?” a little woman in a lavender dress squeaked. “It failed.”

“It doesn't matter, Miss Claiborne,” said Miss Pearson. “We can make as many motions to table as we want. We'll make another tomorrow.”

“And besides,” said a woman in a oppy straw hat. “There's another little surprise in store for the Sus tomorrow.”

“Now, now, Mrs. Pinckard. Tomorrow evening, of course, is the public meeting at the capitol to discuss the passing of the Susan B.

Anthony Amendment.” Miss Pearson said the name as though Susan B. Anthony were a woman of particularly evil repute, and several

people in the room hissed.

“Passing of it indeed!”

“That's not going to happen.”

“Not if we have anything to say about it.”

“That's the spirit,” said a man near the back of the room.

Everybody turned to look at him. “And speaking of spirits, we've just run out in the hospitality room. Not to worry”—he raised a hand—“there's plenty of gold in the kitty, as you all know. We have more coming in from the mountains, but meantime we have sent to Hell's Half-Acre for a small supply to tide us over.”

The Antis were bribing people! Violet thought. They'd bribed that Seth Walker fella to make him change sides. And they were serving illegal alcohol to legislators up on the eighth oor—that's why those drunks were up there.

“Bootleg stu from Hell's Half-Acre will make you blind,” another man observed.

“Then we'll lead the legislators up to the capitol by the hand and help them cast their votes.”

Miss Pearson gestured for silence. “We're ahead of the game. The Sus were counting on Walker, and losing him to us was a serious setback for them. We're going to win this.…”

There were mutters of “yes!” and “hear, hear!”

“But not without a ght. Tomorrow, we need all hands at the capitol.”

Violet combined a cucumber and a chicken sandwich and ate them together as an experiment.

“Governor Roberts is not on our side. He's made no secret of the fact that he's a Su. We need to ride herd on all our men and do whatever it takes to keep them loyal. And if need be, we may have to be prepared to remove a few of the Sus' men from the picture.”

Violet had nished her sandwiches, and she got up to get a few more. Everyone was listening with rapt attention to Miss Pearson and nobody seemed to care how many sandwiches Violet was taking. They had probably already eaten in the dining room. They were suitably attired. Hanging on the wall behind Miss Pearson was the ag of the Confederate States of America. Violet recognized it from her history books at school. But the Civil War had been over for fty-ve years. What was the matter with these people? Didn't they even know what country they lived in?

Why were all these women against woman surage anyway?

Violet could understand how a woman could just never have thought one way or another about voting but not how a woman could be against it. Well, except Mother was.

Violet drifted out of the room to the balcony and stood looking down at the lobby below. The railing was low— too low to lean on —so she didn't stand too close. She stood beside a garland of plaster fruit that decorated an arch in the ceiling and chewed a cold tongue sandwich thoughtfully. From up here, you could actually hear what people were saying.

A balding, stoop-shouldered man in a brown suit stood below her.

He was wearing a yellow rose in his lapel and talking to a woman in a white dress with a yellow sash.

“It's a shame about Seth Walker, Miss Pollitzer,” he said. “That's a blow. How many do we have now?”

“I'm not sure, Mr. Hanover,” the lady in white said. “Miss Mayhew is working on the latest numbers now.”

Violet almost dropped her tongue sandwich when she heard the

name Mayhew.

“Oh, here she comes now.”

This time Violet did drop her sandwich, and it fell over the railing. Violet didn't stop to see where it hit. She put her plate down on the oor and turned and clattered down the stone staircase, having the presence of mind to drop her red rose on the stairs as she went.

She might not have recognized the woman coming toward her if she hadn't heard those people say “Mayhew.” Chloe was wearing a smart sky blue walking suit and a straw hat with a yellow rose in it.

Looking under the hat, Violet could see that Chloe had bobbed her brown hair—it only just reached her collar. Mother would have had a t. There were shadows under Chloe's dark brown eyes that made her look older than her twenty-three years.

“Hello, Chloe,” Violet said.

Chloe stared at Violet as if she were a girae. “Violet! What on earth?” Then she ran forward and threw her arms around Violet.

Violet hugged Chloe, embarrassed. Theirs was not a hugging family. They let go of each other quickly.

“Violet, what on earth, how on earth …” She took a step back and looked nervous. “Violet, Mother and Father aren't here, are they?”

“No,” said Violet. “I, um …” To say she had run away suddenly seemed melodramatic in the face of sensible Chloe in her sensible suit. “I kind of left.” She felt a need to justify herself, so she added, “They never gave me any of your letters. And then I found them in Mother's desk when I was looking for a stamp.”

“Oh, Violet! Then what happened?”

Mr. Hanover and Miss Pollitzer listened politely.

“I just got mad and left,” said Violet. “And then I went to New York, and … well, anyway, here I am.”

“I can't believe you came all this way alone!”

“I wasn't exactly alone,” said Violet. She wasn't sure how to explain about Mr. Martin and Myrtle, particularly now that she had lost them.

Chloe turned to the other two. “I beg your pardon. This is my sister, Violet. Violet, this is Miss Anita Pollitzer of the National Woman's Party and Mr. Joe Hanover, a representative from Memphis who's leading the surage ght in the House.”

Violet turned and curtsied carefully. “How do you do,” she said politely. “I'm very pleased to meet you.”

“Likewise, I'm sure,” said Miss Pollitzer.

“How do you do,” said Mr. Hanover politely.

“Chloe, you'd better go get this taken care of,” said Miss Pollitzer, nodding at Violet. “But did you get those numbers?”

“I think so.” Chloe handed Miss Pollitzer a piece of paper. “If they're uncommitted, I put a question mark next to them, and if they might change sides, I put two question marks. I might not make it to the meeting tonight. Excuse us.”

Violet curtsied again and then followed Chloe briskly across the lobby toward the women's entrance.

The Tulane Hotel, where Chloe and the other National Woman's Party members were staying, was two blocks away, downhill, and Violet noticed when they got outside that it hadn't gotten any cooler even though it was fully dark now. The Tulane was only six stories high instead of ten, and it was less intimidating than the Hermitage.

There was a long line of cars parked out front, and Chloe and Violet stopped to visit the Hope Chest.

Henry Ford had said, famously, that you could have any color Model T you wanted as long as it was black, but you actually could get other colors. The Hope Chest was dark green, with black fenders and running boards and a black collapsible roof. It was a runabout, with a leather front seat big enough to hold a driver and a passenger but no backseat. Instead, there was an open space behind the cab, which had been tted with a small wooden truck bed. “For carrying stu,” Chloe explained.

They admired the car's pressed steel radiator, its nickel hubcaps and narrow, wire-spoked wheels, the nickel radiator cap, and the big round electric headlamps, which Violet said looked like bug eyes.

“Like frog eyes,” said Chloe fondly. “And it's amphibious too, the Hope Chest is, like a frog. I've driven it right through streams, especially this last month, when I've been up in the mountains, hunting down Tennessee legislators in their dens.”

She patted the Hope Chest on its steel hood. “It's my freedom, the Hope Chest. And women have been using automobiles so much this last year, they might really give us freedom. I mean freedom to be real, voting citizens of the United States.” She sighed. “If there's time, I'll teach you to drive it.”

The Tulane lobby was just as big as that of the Hermitage but less grand, with wooden pillars and paneling and marble oors (there seemed to be a lot of marble in Nashville, Violet thought). There were no crowds—just a few people here and there in armchairs reading the evening paper and a few women wearing yellow sashes or yellow roses passing through.

On the way inside, Violet nished her explanation of how she'd gotten to Nashville, which she'd started as they walked from the Hermitage.

“And you wired Mother and Father from Washington and let them

know you were all right?” Chloe asked.

“Yes. Mr. Martin made me,” Violet said.

“Good. I'm sure they must be frantic.” Chloe got her key from the desk clerk, who was playing pinochle with a drummer (as traveling salesmen were called). The drummer had his hat on.

Violet thought it was odd of Chloe to take Mother and Father's side, considering Chloe wasn't on speaking terms with either of them. “I don't think they're frantic. But anyway, I told them I was all right. Mr. Martin paid for it.”

“Well, I think you should write them again. I'm not sure how long we're going to be here, but they'll be worried,” said Chloe as they climbed the stairs to the second oor.

It seemed like no matter how many times she mentioned Mr.

Martin's name, Chloe wasn't going to say anything about him. If Mr.

Martin was sweet on Chloe, Violet thought, it must be one-sided.

Violet was more concerned about “how long we're going to be here.” Chloe didn't seem as happy as she should have been to see Violet.

“But I'm going to stay with you,” Violet said. “Maybe you should be the one to write and tell them that. They don't listen to me.”

“We'll see,” said Chloe.

“Aren't you worried about Mr. Martin?” said Violet, trying again.

“Those agents that were after him?”

“No,” said Chloe rmly, turning the key in the lock and opening the door. “Oh, don't look at me like that, Violet! This ax has been hanging over Theo's—over Mr. Martin's head all the time I've known him, and I can't worry about it anymore.”

Violet thought that was unkind, but Chloe looked so exhausted that Violet decided not to say anything. She looked around the

room. It had two iron bedsteads, like the room in the Hermitage, but it was a bit bigger. Both beds were clearly taken, which Violet guessed meant she would have to share with Chloe.

“I'm sorry, I know that sounds mean,” said Chloe. “But you know, Violet, you can't change people. Most of us nd that out the hard way—I'm telling you for free. Do you want some Chero-Cola?”

There was a rattle of ice in a bucket, and the pop of a bottle opener, and Chloe handed Violet a soft drink bottle.

“Thanks,” Violet said, and took a long gulp of the Chero-Cola. It was very sweet, and she instantly felt less tired. She tried to pass the bottle back to Chloe.

“No, you go ahead and nish it,” said Chloe, sitting down on the bed with a sigh and taking o her shoes. “Don't worry about Mr.

Martin, Violet. He can take care of himself.”

“What about Myrtle?” Violet demanded.

“He can take care of her too,” said Chloe, unlooping her stockings from her garters.

“What if he gets arrested? What's going to happen to Myrtle then?” Violet was getting frustrated. She had been counting on Chloe to take charge and x things, not to take o her shoes and look exhausted.

Chloe frowned. “I don't know. You're right, Violet. I don't know.”

She stood up and left the room abruptly, and Violet heard her padding down the hall. To the bathroom, Violet assumed.

Violet stooped down and unlaced her own shoes. It was hot in here too, and the open window and transom that were supposed to catch a breeze didn't, because there wasn't one to catch. There was a fan on the windowsill, but when Violet went over to turn it on, she saw that it took nickels. She wasn't sure if it was worth it to spend any of her small store of cash for a few minutes of breeze. It looked like Chloe intended to go to sleep now. Violet would probably be expected to go to sleep too, even though she didn't know what had become of Myrtle. It was very frustrating.

The door creaked open. “I'm sorry, Violet. I'm just so tired. I don't know what we can do about your friend. We could call the police, but—”

“No,” said Violet, alarmed. “If Mr. Martin hasn't been caught, we don't want to call the police!”

“Right,” said Chloe. “I'm not sure if they'd even bother to look for a lost colored girl anyway, or what they'd do with her when they found her. Oh, dear. And you don't even know what town they left the train in?”

Violet shook her head. “I just know it was about an hour after we left Chattanooga.”

“Well, I guess the rst thing is to nd out which town it was,” said Chloe. “If we have to, we can drive over there in the Hope Chest.” She sighed. “Tomorrow, why don't you go over to the train station and look at the timetable and see if you can't gure out

which town it was.”

“Okay,” said Violet.

Chloe opped down on the bed with a creak of springs. “How is Stephen?” she said.

Violet was busy thinking about Myrtle and Mr. Martin, and it took her a second to remember who Stephen was—their brother, of course. “He's the same as ever.”

“Oh, dear,” said Chloe tiredly. “And Mother? How is Mother?”

“The same as ever,” said Violet shortly.

“I really am glad you're here, Violet.” Chloe put an arm up to cover her eyes. “I'm just so tired. And I have a lot of other things on my mind right now. Don't forget to brush your teeth before you go to bed.”

And she fell asleep before Violet could point out that she'd left her toothbrush at the Hermitage.